Deer eating grass this time o year

[Cooter]

I've noticed in the past, usually after a rain and a warm spell that deer will hit pastures, plowed fields, etc for new shoots of grass and other green vegetation. However I've also noticed this lately and its been fairly cold and very little precipitation. So I wonder if its just that everything else is turning brown and they are seeking any remaining green stuff out or if there is some kind of grass/weed/whatever that emerges in late fall? Any comments/theories/guesses?

[so haaad]

I believe deer need that roughage & bacteria that is found in grasses to break down other food types in their gut. You'll see deer feeding on grasses the rest of the season, especially we don't get much snow.

[DRH1175]

I have let my lawn grow quite long like 6 inches this fall and have been seeing deer lately at night. It is a sign that they like the green stuff. Maybe I will put down some grain and it will keep them around for the winter for my viewing pleasure. My house is about 1000feet from Carlos Avery. So I suppose they are coming for the greenery.

[Steve Foss]

In my experience, deer would always rather graze green grass/plants in fields than dine on brown, dried twigs. They'll go into field edges as long as they can get to the green stuff before they yard up. In some places, you can see 200-300 deer gathered where wind has swept fields clean of snow. In the Red River Valley, they'll gather from miles to feast on leftover sugar beets in the fields where there's no snow.

[96trigger]

This fall, I hunted the edge of a cornfield. Two field up, maybe 75 yards, there was corn field picked for silage in early September. The deer would walk through the corn and alfalfa fields to go eat the green shoots coming up in the plowed field. The loved that stuff. It has been their main forage for the last couple of weeks.

[Hines R]

We saw deer feeding during the day in fields, and then more deer feeding out in the fields at night. I wonder specifically what they are eating. It was a grass looking green shoots from a distance though. We had a big 8 pointer going out every night but he was coming in from across the plowed field, or land that isn't ours to hunt. Never got the shot at him. The field they tended to feed in was just off of the land we can hunt as well. All plowed fields though.

Ryan